Obama communications director Dan Pfeiffer used his official White House Twitter account to recommend a story undermining the anti-Obamacare story of an aging cancer sufferer concerned about her health care

President Obama's top communications strategist sparked outrage on Monday after tweeting a blog entry that belittled a cancer sufferer's concerns about losing her doctor and insurance because of Obamacare.

Edie Littlefield Sundby, a California woman with stage-4 gallbladder cancer, wrote a powerful Wall Street Journalop-ed that she will soon lose her medical insurance – and access to her life-saving oncologists – as a direct result of the Affordable Care Act.

But Think Progress, a far-left blog, countered with an article claiming that her insurance company, United Healthcare, left her in the lurch because it chose to abandon the individual insurance market for financial reasons.

Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, tweeted a link to that story, titled 'The Real Reason That The Cancer Patient Writing In Today’s Wall Street Journal Lost Her Insurance.'

The impact on Twitter was both fast and furious, since Pfeiffer's Twitter feed is an 'official' White House account, meaning that it speaks for the administration.

Sundby, who has battled her cancer since 2007, had explained that she is 'one of the losers' in the president's signature health insurance overhaul.

Cancer specialists at Stanford have 'kept me alive,' she wrote, 'but UCSD has provided emergency and local treatment support during wretched periods of this disease, and it is where my primary-care doctors are.'

Both hospitals, and the doctors who practice in them, are covered by her current PPO but Covered
California, the state's Obamacare insurance exchange, doesn't offer a
single plan that both Stanford and UCSD's medical centers will accept.

And, citing unfair tax breaks its competitors enjoy, United Healthcare has said it plans to pull out of California's individual insurance market entirely, leaving Sundy with few options.

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Battle: Cancer sufferer Edie Sundby (pictured with her husband Dale) says she is 'one of the losers' from Obamacare as she has lost her healthcare plan and now faces losing her doctors too

Few options: Sundby (taking part in an 800-mile
walk after she was previously cancer-free) must either accept the
government plan and lose her doctors or pay more with an unfamilar
insurance company

'I am a determined fighter and extremely
lucky,' she writes. 'But this luck may have just run out: My
affordable, lifesaving medical insurance policy has been canceled
effective December 31.'

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Think Progress argued that United selfishly 'packed
its bags and dumped its beneficiaries because it wants its competitors
to swallow the first wave of sicker enrollees' on the government-run
exchange.

Pfeiffer's tweet may have been a small gesture, but it set off a firestorm of responses to the unusual step of a White House communications czar using a partisan blog to fire a rhetorical fusillade against a terminally ill taxpayer.

'Attacking cancer patients. So this is what a complete lack of self-awareness and moral judgement looks like,' tweeted Republican strategist Rick Wilson.

Dan Pfeiffer's Twitter feed is an 'official' White House account, giving his tweets extra weight since he's presumed to be speaking for the Obama administration

He sent out this link to a ThinkProgress article to all his followers

World-class care: University of California, San Diego (pictured), where her primary care doctors are based, does not accept the same exchange plan as Stanford University, where her primary oncologist is based

USA Today oped editor David Mastio took issue with that assessment. 'So failure to provide sufficient empathy is an "attack,"' he tweeted. 'Wait until that standard gets used against the next GOP prez. Yeesh.'

Scott Paterno, one of the late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno's sons and a one-time congressional candidate, fired off: '[S]o, the bait and switch from the obvious lie is to "its all the insurance companies' fault?" Shocking.'

Sundby also focused on that presidential campaign 'lie' in her op-ed.

'What happened to the
president's promise, "You can keep your health plan"? Or to the promise
that "You can keep your doctor"?' she wrote.

'Thanks
to the law, I have been forced to give up a world-class health plan.
The exchange would force me to give up a world-class physician. Perhaps that's the point.'

'Broken promises': Obama has previously said that people will not lose their healthcare plans or their doctors - but Sundby said that is not the case for her and demands to know why

Wall Street Journal online editorial page editor James Taranto came to Sundby's defense on Monday afternoon, with a biting column titled 'How Low Can They Go?'

Pfeiffer (R) is close to Barack Obama, meaning that his tweets provide the impression that he's speaking for the president

He called Pfeiffer a 'fast-talking flack' and Think Progress – the house blog of a group run by former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta – 'a leftist propaganda outfit.'

Taranto also blamed 'the regulatory structure established by Obama's comprehensive "reform",' not avarice on United Healthcare's part, for the company's decision to cancel Sundby's plan.

Her op-ed heaped fuel on an Obamacare fire that has seen more than insurance companies cancel the policies of more than 2 million Americans, with more expected by month's end.

Sundby added to MailOnline: 'What I would like to see happen as a result of my op-ed is for the American people to insist that the Executive branch and Congress (and even federal employees) all sign up for health insurance on the exchanges.

'That is the right thing to do. And is the surest way to fix any problems with the exchanges and our healthcare system.'

Many Americans forced to seek insurance in the Obamacare exchanges have found higher premium rates, along with higher deductible rates and narrowed networks of covered physicians and hospitals.

The enrollment process has also been plagued by software and data entry problems, which led Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to offer an apology to a House committee last week.

Sebelius called the enrollment software problems a 'debacle' and 'a miserably frustrating experience for way too many Americans.'